Unfortunate that. I originally had that with LOTR, but if you can manage to bully past it in Eye of the World you'll make it to about book 7 at the very least without trouble.

I had the 'luck' that my first encounter with WOT was by getting the second half of "The Great Hunt" (some were apparently published in parts?), which made me extremely interested in the rest of the books, which I collected piecemeal. Since I got a glimpse of most of the 'middle' area of the series during that collection, I never got stuck at any of the 'boring' parts because I knew what it was building towards even if it was only a vague idea caused by flipping through a book.

I hope you're not one of many who've told me "I only read up to chapter four, then gave up" because from chapter 5 onward is literally non-stop interesting action. And soooo many people have said this to me.But then, there are a few later books that seemingly have long, slow sections in them, so... >_>